


Love is a Hungry Thing

by whichstiel



Series: Season 13 Codas [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s13e12 Various and Sundry Villains, Gen, SPN 13x12, Zombies, episode coda, rowena’s backstory, various and sundry villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 18:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13553427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Rowena encounters her first zombie at a regency house party.





	Love is a Hungry Thing

Love was a hungry thing best fed by delicate flirting over lemonade and cookies at house parties just like this one. Rowena waited by the hor d'oeuvres for Andrew MacCabe with barely concealed impatience. The children she’d been tasked with overseeing were snug in their beds, sound asleep from a potion of her own devise. She wore a shell pink gown which accentuated her pearled skin and crimson hair, one lock carefully curled down over her brow inviting Andrew’s touch if only she could coax him for a walk in the back garden. Her gloved hands were clasped together demurely, accentuating her fine, narrow waist. She watched the room through lowered eyelashes and pasted on the shy smile she’d practiced before the season began.

The room was beginning to fill with the young lords and ladies who had traveled out to this quiet country house to find matches. Mothers circulated their daughters like fishermen trawling for sharks with a bloodied carcass. Some of the young men had already fallen prey to their depredations. They escorted simpering bits of lace around the room as though it were an fascinating museum instead of a disused summer home of London regulars. Rowena, in her role of intriguing governess with a mysterious and rumored illustrious past, hoped to surpass them all.

Her lips slipped into a broader smile and she tilted her chin prettily towards the young man who had just entered the room. Andrew was a broad shouldered man, old enough to be in control of his fortune and ungainly enough to have evaded the eye of most of the women at the party. His family managed a shipping business that, with a few weather charms, would recognize record profits. She could make Andrew rich beyond the imagination of any in the room. But first she had to get him to propose.

Andrew walked straight through the busy room towards her, a rose flush coloring his cheeks. He nodded at her and his blush intensified as he reached for a delicate fish pastry near her hip.

“Rowena,” he said quietly. “It is good to see you circulating among us at this early hour.”

Rowena managed a light, tinkling laugh. “Ach, well the wee ones were so tired out. We went for a lovely long walk through the gardens today. Saw the most marvelous roses!” She sighed and moved her hand out just a fraction, as though she were preparing to take his hand. Then she snatched it back, as though recovering her sense of propriety. “How I could use a turn about the paths again, though.” She brushed at the lock of her hair, then trailed her fingers down the curve of her cheek and all the way down her neck to the swell of her bosom. “‘Tis a trifle warm.”

Andrew grinned, his eyes trapped by her décolletage. He was a rural boy at heart, and often spoke longingly of the wide rolling hills of his country estate. “I’d be honored to escort you through the rose paths,” he said, extending his arm and giving a slight bow.

Rowena dipped her head to hide her lack of blush and took his arm, letting him spirit her away. He would be a good match for her, too busy to meddle in her affairs and too weak to quarrel. A century ago, she’d tried to marry her way into wealth with a love spell and it had all gone horribly awry. The man in question had starved himself for love for her and the second son had desecrated his brother’s grave in her name, before bleeding out over the turned soil. Love spells too often broke their targets into pieces. Rowena was of the personal opinion that this was because love didn’t really exist except as a kind of pleasant fairy tale meant to appease the desperate masses.

As she and Andrew left the room, Rowena looked pitiably upon the young women who remained. Many of them were terribly young, the very picture of wide-eyed innocent virgins, ripe for sacrifice. They’d not yet learned that marriage was a necessary shield and nothing more.

Andrew led Rowena outside, chatting amiably about his herd of scottish cattle and the fluctuating price of fish. She pretended to stumble under the rose arbor, pressing against his warm, young body, and he kissed her soft and chaste under the gently swaying blossoms. By the time they’d circled back towards the house, she had him.

* * *

Only two hours later, Rowena hefted a mattock in her hands. Blood and gore dripped from the bladed edge and the pretty young girl who’d been trying to eat her brain for supper collapsed to the floor, one side of her head caved in. “Andrew!” Rowena shouted, mouth curling down in irritation. “Where in the holy hell have you gone?”

The din of terror still filled the house as men and women shrieked alike, or were torn to pieces by clean white gentry teeth and turned into shuffling undead horrors themselves. Rowena shifted the wooden handle in her hands and prowled forward through the sitting room. Blood plastered her flimsy skirts to her legs, and they pulled at her thighs with each step. She longed for sturdy shoes instead of slippers. A blister formed on the back of one heel and she lifted her foot impatiently and pointed her finger at it. A short blast of magic and it subsided.

Zombies. Of course, the moment she’d clinched a rich husband, some blithering idiot had to call forth a zombie. “I will kill you, Alice,” she muttered as she rounded a corner, weapon extended. The hallway was clear. Most of the zombie infestation had concentrated upstairs, where the gentle folk had fled once they’d realized that great aunt Matilda hadn’t simply gone mad and started biting her grand nieces. Rowena wrinkled her nose at the stairs. She should flee outside like a sensible person, yet here she remained. She had to find Andrew, then battle her way upstairs to find the book. “Andrew!”

Rowena risked another shout and was rewarded at last with a distant gurgling, “Rowen--” before it was cut off. She rushed down the hall towards the kitchens. The servingways were empty, cleared out by far more sensible denizens who understood that when gentlefolk went mad it was best to be far away. She found Andrew in the kitchen, or rather, she saw his leg twitching behind the counter.

Rowena sprang around the other side, surprising the undead gentleman who tore greedily at Andrew’s neck. “Well. For fuck’s sake,” she said with an exhausted sigh and swung the mattock at the gentleman. The weapon cleaved his head with ease, glancing into his brain tissue and embedding in the wooden counter. She hauled against it, placing a slippered foot against the wood until she managed to pull it free. Then she crouched over Andrew. He choked at her, blood spilling from the wound, his eyes wide and desperate. “You stupid git,” she told him sadly. “I told you to stay by me. We could have ruled the sea, you and I. But instead you’ve gone and killed herself.” She drew herself up and his eyes locked on her weapon. “Goodbye.” The mattock descended and Andrew lay still.

For a moment Rowena let herself lean against the counter. It was blissfully quiet in the kitchen and the back door stood open invitingly. She could leave this chaos and save herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done so. But instead she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, picturing the servants’ quarters above her. The book. She couldn’t leave it.

Again, she hefted the mattock in her hands and plunged back into the heart of the house. She fought her way upstairs and into the small room she and Alice had been assigned for the duration of the party. The house reeked of blood, the screams descending into growls that told Rowena survivors were dwindling rapidly. Rowena burst into the room.

“Alice,” she hissed. “Alice, are you here?” She stamped her foot against the floor and straightened imperiously. “Alice, get your great big bloody fool head out here now and bring the book.”

There was a whimper from the dark corner and Rowena swiveled her head towards it. “Alice,” she said again, gentling her voice. “My poor wee girl, you should have known you weren’t ready to wield the magic of the book. Come on out, my dear, and we can fix this together.”

A sniffle sounded, then another. Finally, the rustle of clothing brushing against the floor filled the room and Alice crept forward. Her hair was disheveled and eyes saucer-wide in her head. All her airs as a fine lady’s maid were shed and she now trembled, her fine mouth drawn into a grimace. Alice held the book tightly in her arms.

Something in Rowena’s chest relaxed and she let that relief bleed into a gentle smile. “Dear girl, come on. We can fix this.”

“I’m so sorry! Rowena, I didn’t mean to-- I just wanted to--” Her voice broke. “I just wanted to talk to my sister again.”

Rowena nodded calmly, the pieces clicking into place. “Ah, the wee bairn who’d bit old granny was your sister? I’d forgotten you’d lived around here.”

Alice sniffled again. “Is she--?”

“Dead,” Rowena told the young woman with a somber frown. “Again,” she added as an afterthought. The rotted corpse had been the first person Rowena had dispatched with the weapon she’d grabbed from the rose garden toolshed. “I’m so sorry, my poor sweet girl. Family can just wreck you. But we can still put the rest to rights.”

“Is everyone okay?”

Rowena valiantly fought to not roll her eyes. “Oh. Peachy,” she said. “But we should still nip this, yes? Come on, let’s have the book and we’ll get to work.” Alice nodded sorrowfully and crossed the room, the book relaxing in her arms. “Go on, set it on the bed.”

Alice bent to place the book on the bed, flipping through the pages to find the resurrection spell she’d badly botched. With her head down and the light dim, she never saw the mattock’s blade. It severed the girls spine at the neck and she tumbled down, glancing off the mattress and falling to the floor. The girl spasmed as Rowena gathered her precious book into her arms and crossed the room to her back. She threw in the book and the few effects she’d left out on their shared dresser. Then, with an exasperated look at the cooling body on the floor, Rowena left the room.

The house was just a shadowed thing on the moor as Rowena left astride one of the deceased’s horses. She wrapped her cloak around her and clutched the bag to her as she crouched over the horse. Once the bloody tale got out, she’d have to disappear for a while. Maybe she’d head into Europe, or cross again into the Americas. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Marriage was, perhaps, vastly overrated.

Love was a hungry thing, but survival was the better beast to serve by far.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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